6 reasons why spreadsheets turn timesheets into a nightmare

Spreadsheets are great: they allow us to log a lot of information in an efficient format. They allow us to make computations, charts, and lots of fancy stuff (if you know the formulas). And because everyone has a spreadsheet program (Excel for most of us), it’s easy to send the information to someone else.

However, spreadsheets are a nightmare waiting to happen

Why? Because we expect spreadsheets to behave like centralized databases, self-updating and self-managed which is not the case.

Here are 6 reasons why you should stay away from spreadsheets for your timesheets:

Spreadsheets don’t report to central when something changes. Updating your timesheet? Making a correction? Unless you remember to let management know about the change, it stays in the spreadsheet.

An endless number of versions. With email, spreadsheets have become even more disastrous. As one version is sent, someone sends back a correction, and then we need to resend the corrected time sheet to everyone over again. We end up with so many versions of the same file, it’s maddening!

Spreadsheets are an island. Unless equipped with advanced knowledge of Excel programming, what is in the spreadsheet stays in the spreadsheet. If we have a team working together, they cannot log everything in the same spreadsheet at the same time. This creates and archipelago of information that needs to be reconnected by the administration.

It is a pain to turn them into an invoice. Unless significant investment is made in turning spreadsheets into a billing system (and think of the pain of maintaining this!), information from the team’s time sheets has to be copied and pasted over to the invoice. Can we think of a better way to introduce mistakes in our invoices?

Consolidation? How does information flow from timesheets to invoices to accounts receivables and to payroll? With spreadsheets, it’s all done by hand, with – of course – risks of error …. And a bonus!

Forgetting is just a fact of life. We forget. We forget about this one billable call we took while driving. We forget about the business lunch we had last week. It’s normal. With spreadsheets, those things get left out, and the company loses revenues.

Isn’t it time those systems talked to each other?

We live in this great modern world. We have the technology to flow information from one system to next, seamlessly, automatically. So why are we so bent on doing it all manually? An advanced system such as Abak 360 allows you to eliminate the risks occurring when using numerous solutions. With Abak, you enter your timesheets, your invoices, your accounts receivables and your payrolls in the same system. Managing your timesheets has never been so easy!